Rag and Bones
by Miss Yvonne Hartman
Summary: I'm a lost Rebel now, spinning with no direction in mind. Hayffie, set in Mockingjay.


Rag and Bones

I'm a lost Rebel now, spinning with no direction in mind. Hayffie, set in Mockingjay.

I don't own the Hunger Games...

* * *

_Don't leave my half a heart alone,  
On the water  
Cover me in rag and bone,  
Sympathy  
'Cause I don't wanna get over you_

_Sorrow_, The National

_XxX_

My clothes don't fit anymore. I lingered in the doorway between the hall and living room, uncertain until his gaze rose from the label on his whiskey bottle to meet my eyes. I blink and look down, suddenly shy under his silvery stare, holding up the front of my dress against my chest. The back gapes open since I can't reach the zip. I turn slowly, presenting my back to him. "Can you zip me up?" I ask.

Haymitch pushes himself off the couch and steps towards me. The threads of the brocade fabric slide against my palms. I never thought I would see fabric this beautiful again, my pretty dresses. I never expected I would survive imprisonment or for my apartment to survive the bombings, but it did. I did. And now I have it all back, my sparkling possessions, my beautiful clothes. Yet for all their grandeur, the colours seem muddier somehow, muted by everything that has changed inside my mind. In the streets the pink marble pavement is cracked. Friends I knew from my days as an escort or time at school are dead. I need my pills. Although I cannot see them now, I know the shadows are waiting, flickering at the edges of my new reality.

Haymitch still hasn't said anything and a glance over my shoulder shows his expression is drawn and distant. My lonely Victor. I reach back and pull the synthetic hairs of my bobbed wig over my shoulder, letting the strands run through my fingers.

"Haymitch?" I prompt. His gaze flicks up then back down. Oh please don't say anything about my scars. They won't fade fast enough, the passing months making no impact on their presence, still pink on my skin.

I feel his fingertips touch my skin, along the line I know instinctively is the first scar, high up on my back. He gently traces it from left to right, drawing flames onto my skin with his touch. My heart thuds, almost painfully, splintering in my chest. I feel my body close up, box like, wanting to run from the memories that jump like shadows on the walls in my mind. Burning. Burning like his fingers on the raised line of scars.

He says my name softly, his fingers dipping lower, following the crisscrossing map. His hands are gentle, like his lips. He's such a hard man, bitter and angry at a world we have to keep reminding ourselves no longer exists. But his lips and his hands are always gentle and that is one of the many things I love about him. And I think, _I love this man, I really do_.

He doesn't ask me about the scars, how I got them, what each one stands for. I suppose he already knows. And in my mind I see myself, whipped and bloodied stumbling through a garden of white roses. Falling back with those white buds weaved in my hair, petals turning red, red, red with blood.

_O_ _sweet child, says the snake, go back to your sunlit cage._

Haymitch's hands push the material of my dress off my shoulders, to my hips, and I let him trace the scars that cover my lower back. And I stand silent under his ministrations, no longer terrified, no longer trapped in memories of torment but instead achingly aware of his touch and his gaze and the heat when his lips touch the top of my shoulder. His hands run swiftly down my arms, lacing his fingers with mine as I turn in his arms and his lips seek mine.

I die in his kiss. His hands hold me up as much as they hold me down and I melt against his chest, threading my hands through his hair and standing on my toes. My dress has slipped to my waist and I don't mind, my chest against his. And I think of all the things that make me whole, odd components adjacent to flesh and bone and winter cream skin. I wonder who I am. What was I before, even? Glitter shoes and expensive silks. Wigs and makeup to hide behind. Music that made my heart heavy. An actress, a smile, a Rebel. I'm a lost Rebel now, spinning with no direction in mind. Going through the motions because I've lost all instinct, up or down, I could be under the depths of the ocean and not know, not care. Lights blink and fade in the darkness of my mind. You can't see stars in the Capitol sky, drowned out by the lights of the shining city, but Haymitch shows me stars in my mind.

It feels like falling, and yet Haymitch is here, with his gentle lips and strong hands, keeping me from drifting. And I think that it is not much of a life, this limbo between the old world and the new, but it is enough for now. Because when he kisses me I see stars and that is more than I could have ever hoped for at one time in my life, when I saw nothing but a ceiling of wet concrete for months on end.

His fingers slip under the wig and I freeze, forcing myself to stay in the moment and not fade back into the memories, to not lock away again. I give over to his ministrations, feeling the wig fall away and his long fingers unwind my hair, arranging it around my face.

I hide under my wigs, not out of fashion these days, but necessity, to hide the lasting signs of what they did to me, chopping my hair so roughly my scalp bled. Leaving it uneven and charred and ruined. Haymitch's lips press against my temple as his hands run through my hair. "You're so lovely." He whispers. I don't look in the mirror, I'll believe him.

I kiss him again, leaning into his strong arms. He reminds me that we have an event to get to, and laughs that I have forgotten the schedule. I wonder what he's talking about for a minute before I remember the whole point of getting dressed was for the execution. To help Katniss prepare for her final act in the Rebellion. I pull back a little and nod, staring at the carpet. I feel a stab of fear. I don't know if I can go back out there into the shining city and face the people, my people, who tortured me and killed my friends and sent children to their death through my hands. I start to shake.

Oh I try to escape the shadows that rise when I think of the Tributes, the children, the Games. I try to focus on the details of today's appointment, to distract my mind form the spiralling thoughts, but I cannot remember them. I am forgetting things all the time, schedules and meetings, I don't remember if they are not written down in front of me. Haymitch smooths the fretting in my brow. And tells me he will hide all the clocks and schedules when we go to Twelve. He succeeds in making me laugh, and the sound is like diamond shattering. I haven't laughed in a year, not since the day I felt grass – real, deep velvet green grass – under my feet upon my release from prison.

He stares down at me, lips twisted into an amused line as he tugged a lock of my hair. I lock my eyes with his, the silvery grey never fails to make my breath catch, and smile. We never had much of a life before, our every kiss tainted by the Games. But they are gone now. There will be no more Hunger Games. We could be free.

Yet, as I think this, I feel myself grow a little cold, my smile fading out. The events to come loom like shadows on the walls. We will never be free. Not when we'll relive every moment behind closed eyelids, in nightmares and flashbacks. I'm not naïve enough to think I'm safe, even now, all that glitters (however dull its shine) could go in a second.

He kisses me gently, turning me by the shoulders and zipping my dress with steady hands. I'll need a belt, it gapes at the waist. I pull him down for one more kiss, wishing I could fall into his body, his bones and stay there forever. I feel fire on my lips and see those stars again, the ones that shine in the corners of my fractured mind.

"I love you." I say. "I haven't, haven't been able to tell you before, not properly." The months apart have taken so much from us. I look down, then back up at him. "I love you."

Haymitch pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me. I'm rag and bone, we're both broken, but he's here, and he presses his lips against my temple and sighs, "I love you too, Effie. Always."

_Fin_


End file.
